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It’s Basic Economics. The EV Is Junk.

Watch This Severe Electric Car Fire And Explosion At A Charging Station
May 8, 2020, at a charging station in Dongguan, China, where an electric car caught fire when being plugged into a charger.

While perusing my news feed, I found a recent Fortune magazine article on the problems that electric vehicle owners are having with their cars, 80% more difficulties on average than conventional combustion vehicles (see below).  The writer tried to deflect the problems into the category of “growing pains” for the new industry.

Yes, I agree with him, but he seems unaware of the much more fundamental issue.  Problems or no, the EV is a politically driven product and, like any such good or service, has politically driven trade-offs.  Growing pains?  Growing pains or no, the whole EV industry probably would be immensely smaller but for politics.  Politicians constructing their road to utopia understand that people must be bribed, and coerced, to mass adopt something that makes their lives worse off.  The things still don’t make much economic sense compared to those efficient muscle engines.

Internal combustion engine
Gasoline direct injection engine.
Electric-car battery costs: Tesla $190 per kwh for pack, GM $145 for cells
An EV battery pack weighs on average 1,000 pounds. Your typical combustion engine and its transmission can vary from 300 (4-cylinder) to 1,000 pounds (V-8 powerhouse).

Lest we forget, politicians are camp followers, always with their fingers in the wind discerning the next fashionable thought or issue.  Those leaning to the Left already have a laundry list of ready-made issues, just add water – i.e., donors’ money.

But there’s one huge complication: Politics is a poor driver of an economy. Utility (use and practicality) occupies first place in a normally functioning economy.  Sellers invent and continue to produce the stuff that buyers find useful and enhances their lives.  If it’s not as good as the alternatives, it’s essentially junk.  It’s the economic definition of junk.  When politics enters the fray, utility disappears from the equation.  Practicality and usefulness take a back seat to powerful groups’ ideological demands.  When the movement rises in prominence due to their momentary occupation of the commanding heights of the culture, they quickly gain the reins of political power to impose their preferences, and the artificially driven esteem for junk rises.

Trade-offs and opportunity costs are tossed to the wind.  If pressed, the true believer can always interject their own wholly invented, unprovable costs into the equation.  Prominent among the hypothetical eco-costs is the existential end of the planet.  That’s always the gambit for the zealot: scare people into adopting the zealot’s choices.  The Left’s ownership of the cultural commanding heights has made it easy for already Left-leaning politicos to engage in the hyperbole.  Consequently, political power is married to an ideology’s agenda.  In the end, your family sedan is forced into oblivion.

So, as politically inspired junk is imposed on the population, what is lost, or the opportunity cost?  On the EV front, the auto producers’ resources are plowed into the less-useful and away from the more-useful.  That’s a trade-off, and it’s unavoidable.  The loss of the opportunity for producing the more useful things (opportunity costs) increases, and that’s equally unavoidable.

What to do if your electric car runs out of charge | Toyota of Orlando
An EV depleted of charge
Vandals cut cables at EV charging station on Vancouver Island - Drive Tesla
Vandals cut and removed charging handles from this charging station on Vancouver Island, B.C.

What does all this mean for you?  Your life changes, and for the worse.  It always pencils-out that way when you are forced to choose the worst alternative. How bad is that alternative?  The whole eco-agenda cascades onto you with its abundant unintended consequences.  It goes beyond the problems with charging and the batteries (some of them catch fire) in the article.  The additional resources to make the thing work as the numerous glitches of the impractical (“growing pains”) raise the costs of producing the impractical which will always translate into an increase in the cost of living.  Higher standards of living do not ride the back of higher costs of production and living.  The more that you try and do that, the worse it gets.

Save the planet by being worse off?  But you aren’t saving the planet. Do you think for a moment that India and China and the rest of Donald Trump’s “shitholes” are going to give up cheap energy?  Come on, get a grip.  China is building new coal-fired plants at the same clip as they are warships.  India, soon to be the planet’s most populous country, wants relief from the oppressive heat.  Sorry, solar panels and windmills won’t cut it.  Economies of scale in energy production, meaning a grid and power plants, is the only thing that’ll elevate people out of the sweat and filth.  Everyone, if they were honest, knows it, except AOC, John Kerry, and our culture’s eco-barkers.

Wait a minute.  That’s quite a crowd who’ve bought into the nonsense.  And nonsense it is.  The leap of faith from a period of warming temperatures to the apocalypse more resembles a religious doctrine than science.  “Follow the science” is no such thing.  It’s follow the eco-Pope.

That Genius of Lansing, Mi., Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, has decided to go California and follow the eco-Pope.  She’s hellbent on bringing blackouts and skyrocketing utility bills to the wolverine state.  She signed two bills establishing energy central planning (see below).  The state must be 100% “clean energy” by 2040, 60% by 2035.  That means a massive increase in solar and wind, 1.5 million acres more (Mackinac Center report, see below).  The costs will be humungous, and it will be taken out of the hide of Michiganders.  And out of the sovereign powers of localities.  Their power to regulate these gargantuan scars on the land in their neighborhood will be proscribed.  Expect each family in the state to shell out an additional $2,746 per year for energy (Mackinac Center report).

Declaring war on gas and petroleum and monopolizing all energy needs onto an electrical grid suffering from “intermittency” (solar and wind) is absolute folly.  Do you want to live worse off? Do you want your children to be worse off?  Don’t think for a moment that at least you’ve saved the planet, as they’ve made most people’s lives more challenging.  By the way, it won’t be true for Jeff Bezos, nor Mark Zuckerberg, nor John Kerry, who married into the Heinz fortune.

Al Gore Celebrates Earth Day By Buying Another 12,000 Square Foot Mansion | The End Times ...
Albert Gore and his mansions

The planet will be the same as before, and you’ll be less well off.  All this brought to you by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

On second thought, they do.  And it’s hooey.

Picture

RogerG

Read more here:

* “Electric vehicle owners report 80% more problems than with conventional cars and trucks amid ‘growing pains’ for the industry, Consumer Reports says”, Tom Krisher of the AP, Fortune, 11/23/23, at https://fortune.com/2023/11/29/electric-vehicle-reliability-more-problems-gas-powered/

* “Michigan Gov Whitmer signs sweeping green energy bill forcing transition from fossil fuels”, Thomas Catenacci, Fox News, 11/30/23, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/michigan-gov-whitmer-signs-sweeping-green-energy-bill-forcing-transition-from-fossil-fuels/ar-AA1kJF4I

* “New Energy Bills Would Increase Costs and Blackouts”, Holly Wetzel, Mackinac Center, 10/27/2023, at https://www.mackinac.org/pressroom/2023/new-energy-bills-would-increase-costs-and-blackouts

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MAGA v. Reagan: Oren Cass v. David Bahnsen, November 15, 2023

Michael Reagan explains why his father wouldn't have voted for Trump - CNNPolitics

Last night (11/30/23), Gov. Ron DeSantis (R, Fla.) squared off against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D, Ca.) in a debate.  It was interesting to note that Newsom tried to use Trump against DeSantis.  It’s true that Trump prefers to tear down his opponents early and often with any tool at hand, usually with a huge dollop of balderdash, so there’s much on the record for Newsom to use.  Ironically, Newsom’s exploitation of Trump’s hostile words about DeSantis underscores a deepening divide within the GOP that can be summarized as MAGA v. Reagan.  You may or may not be aware of it but it is happening before your eyes.

Let’s face it, and here’s the point, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan in thought and comportment.  Trump has come to symbolize a rising isolationist element in the GOP. Reagan was a patriot but no isolationist.  The dividing lines within the GOP are becoming starker by the month as one part of the party coalescing around Trump pays rhetorical homage to Reagan while they are busy tearing down his legacy.

It’s a battle between big-government isolationism (MAGA) and a philosophy of governance built on smaller government combined with international engagement (Reagan).  A couple of weeks prior to the Newsom/DeSantis face-off, David Bahnsen (of the Reagan philosophy) engaged Oren Cass (of the emerging MAGA philosophy) in a debate about this growing rift.  This chasm has a greater impact on the future of the GOP than the spat between Newsom and DeSantis.

They debated over this proposition: There should be a greater role for public policy (government) in markets.  Oren Cass in the affirmative (MAGA), David Bahnsen in the negative (Reagan).

If you are a Trump supporter, you must ask yourself one simple question: Where would he lead us if elected again?  Yes, his first term was Reaganite because he drew from the GOP’s ample stable of Reaganite thinkers, but he burned bridges with them long ago.  A second term would draw from the coterie of big-government isolationists such as Oren Cass.  You would be voting for this.

Here’s a few takeaways from the Bahnsen/Cass challenge:

#1 – To set up the big-government approach, you have to tar the alternative.  The alternative is a more restrained government in order to let markets breathe, what is called free markets.  A market is merely a spontaneous arrangement that brings together buyers and sellers, voluntarily and thus free.  So, a host of problems are assigned to markets by people like Cass to gouge out a bigger role for government to manipulate and direct them.  Though, can stagnating wages, a languishing standard of living, and outsourcing of some American manufacturing justifiably be laid at the feet of markets?  That leads me to #2.

#2 – Cass and his cohort in and out of government won’t say it but they’re into central planning.  Central planning is government actors – bureaucrats, public employees, and politicians – directing the buyers and sellers.  What does this smell like?  It smells like politics being injected into people’s private decisions on what they produce, how they produce it, and what they buy.  If it was a medical treatment, it’s a poor one.  Politician-witchdoctors overriding our individual judgments turns us into serfs and causes more of what they are blaming markets for.  That leads me to #3.

#3 – The knowledge problem. Cass and the politicians on the other side of the fence like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren believe that government is filled with wise demi-gods.  Do you, or anyone for that matter, actually believe that politicians and public employees possess the knowledge and wisdom to substitute their decision-making for that of millions of people in millions of individual circumstances?  It’s been tried before.  It’s the culprit behind the implosion of the Soviet Union.  North Korea’s misery is caused by it.  FDR’s New Deal turned a depression into a Great Depression.  For the old timers like me, the 1970’s stagflation was caused by it.  Those kvetching about today’s stagnated prosperity don’t realize that it is rooted in it.  It’s amazing that the MAGA coterie want more government to cure the ailments caused by government. How’s that supposed to work?  That leads me to #4.

#4 – The subsequent lawmaking and enforcement are infected with fatal pathogens, the fingerprints of government, i.e. politics, at work. Let’s take a look at the heralded CHIPS Act.  The intent to replant chip manufacturing in the U.S. was larded with ESG, DEI, eco-nuttery, child care mandates, etc.  Billions of taxpayer dollars are to be showered on billion-dollar corporate biggies while hitting them with the kind of thing that drove them from American shores to begin with.  Go figure.  The Cass/MAGA approach has been around for years.  Speaking of Gavin Newsom, California is a microcosm of the consequences of this state of mind.  Currently, it is causing Californios to flea the state (800,000 between 2020 and 2022) in like manner as American companies found the grass to be greener in China and the Philippines.  You don’t need to shower taxpayer largesse on a handpicked industry and its towering players to entice them back.  Try not punishing them.  Try acting like you actually like them.  Dah!

This is the debate that we ought to be having in the GOP.  We need more face-offs between the MAGA and the Reagan philosophies so Republican voters know what they’re getting into.  I’m afraid that it’s not happening often enough.  We’ll end up with a lose-lose.  If we win, we’ll get the misery from big-government foolishness under a Republican label.  If we lose, we’ll get it from the Democrats.  Are we even aware of it?

Please watch the Bahnsen/Cass debate below.

RogerG

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Matt Rosendale (R, Mont.), Sicarius?

May be an image of 1 person and the Oval Office
Matt Rosendale (R, Mont.)

The Sicarii (Latin for “dagger wielders” or “dagger men”) were a violent splinter group of Jewish Zealots who were militant enthusiasts of the First Jewish Revolt (or first Jewish-Roman War).  As Jerusalem was falling to Roman legions in 70 A.D., a portion of the Sicarii escaped to occupy the mountaintop fortress of Masada.  There, they committed mass suicide just before the Romans overran their defenses in 74 A.D. according to the ancient historian Josephus.

The Sicarii — The First Assassins in History | History of Yesterday
Sicarii assassins
The last Jewish zealot at the Siege of Masada Ancient Persia, Ancient Rome, Ancient History ...
The last Sicarii zealot committing suicide before the enter the Masada fortress.
Masada: Fortress of the Zealots | Live Science
The ruins of Masada today

Blind fury, combined with the self-conceit of the purity of one’s motives and beliefs, can take a person to some horrible places.  Is Matt Rosendale willing to help lead the GOP to its own Masada?

I am a Montanan and flabbergasted that a person like Rosendale calls himself a Republican and occupies Montana’s second congressional seat.  He’s an embarrassment.

To be sure, Sicarii-like mental states can be found Left and Right.  Anywhere from much of the Democrats’ base to Antifa/BLM can be found the burn-it-all-down state of mind.  Now, in the Age of Trump, Republicans have developed their own Sicarii.

Back in October, in an interview in The Messenger (see below), Rosendale said that he prayed for the defeat of some Republican candidates in 2022 midterms, just enough to ensure a narrow Republican majority in the House.  Here’s Rosendale:

“Look, we have shown, OK, with a very small handful of people, six at times, five at times, that we can have tremendous impact in that body and when a lot of people, unfortunately, were voting to have a 270, 280 Republican House, I was praying each evening for a small majority,”

The Sicarii didn’t only direct their anger at Romans.  They targeted “collaborators”, fellow Jews.  Rosendale, like all fire-breathing zealots going back millennia, heaped scorn on fellow Republicans.  Fanatics have their own rhetoric to identify the “enemy” amongst their normal and natural allies.  “Establishment” and “RINO” serve the same function for Rosendale and company as “collaborator”.

He says that he wants to push the party further to the right, right into a Republican Masada.  Rosendale can’t grasp the fact that there exist many, many people who don’t agree with him, that he doesn’t reflect the Party or the country.  His little faction is a splinter of a splinter.  Is this guy a loon or what?  Does he know the difference between governing and campaigning?

Governing requires working with others who disagree, and there will always be many of those.  An adult would understand half-a-loaf and compromise.  Not the Republican Sicarii.  They have turned the House Republican caucus into a clown car.

I’m in District 1 and represented by Ryan Zinke (R), thank God.  Are the constituents of District 2 happy with a politically suicidal Sicarius pulling them into a political rut?

What started out as Joan of Arc ends up as George Armstrong Custer.

May be a graphic of fireworks and text

RogerG

Read more here:

* “Montana GOP Rep. Prayed for Smaller Republican Majority After 2022 Midterms (Exclusive)”, Dan Merico and Matt Holt, The Messenger, 10/2/23, at https://themessenger.com/politics/montana-republican-house-prayed-smaller-majority

** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/

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Thanksgiving 2023

May be an image of corn and text that says 'HAPPY THANKSGIVING GIVIN'

Are we in the process of wasting our bountiful legacy, that fruit of the ultimate Giver of all truly good things?  We might be forgetting that we have much to be thankful for. Thankful to whom?  Why, of course, God.  We have many blessings that we should be humble enough to recognize the Benefactor.

Are we?  Many, yes, but others are too busy dismantling our cultural edifice, and with it, God.  The rot began at the top among an academic nobility, people festooned in paper credentials and debased ideas and beliefs.  The quaint barroom jibe gets to the point: “You have to be very well educated to be that stupid!” (as stated by Wilfred Reilly)

So did George Orwell: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

From the inquisition to ferret out the esoteric “white supremacy” in the military to the recruitment of all levels of government in the crusade to the indoctrination of our kids in it, the trendy thought penetrates everywhere.  Watch today’s football games for commercials festooned in swank thought.  Amazingly, it’s how the corporate biggies wish to express their altruism by being fashionable and doctrinaire activists.

You’ll see commitments to pursue climate-change ideology in the burnishing of the least practical alternative in personal, mass transportation – the EV.  You’ll see Wells Fargo ads bragging about using my savings and checking account to resuscitate the 2009 financial crisis.  What they’re saying in tv commercials is only the tip of the iceberg.

If we continue on this trajectory, the blessings in future Thanksgivings may be harder to discern.  But ultimately, God is in charge.

Are we to go the way of the Roman Empire or ancient Sumerians?  Can a civilization think its way into decline?  Possibly.  Yet, at this moment in time, we should remind ourselves that we have much to be thankful.  Surely, God has blessed us. Let’s not forget it.

RogerG

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Polls, Polls, Polls, and a Party Gone Bananas

Political Cartoons - Campaigns and Elections - The Shining 2024 - Washington Times

Well, both parties have gone bananas.  The Democrats have gone over to denigrating the entire corpus of western civilization.  They are essentially Marxists in belief with their race/gender hucksterism and eco-central planning. Republicans are in a state of madness, consumed in a cult of Trump.  If you are an actual conservative, and not a cult member, expect to be reviled and abused.  It happened to Mitt Romney.

At times, I have been no fan of Romney.  His decision to march with Black Lives Matter in 2020 was a low point in my esteem for Mitt.  In February 2020, he was the lone Republican senator to vote in support of one of the two articles of impeachment.  I found both charges to be rank partisan prosecutions, something out of Stalin’s playbook.  But at least he had the wherewithal to express loathing for repulsive Trump behavior.  Rumors have been rife among Republican congressional members and staff of their disgust for Trump but were paralyzed by fear for their personal and family’s safety if they came out of the closet.  They have good reason to fear the cult.

One incident stands out. On January 5, 2021, one day before the January 6th riot, Mitt Romney boarded a plane in Salt Lake City for a flight to Washington, D.C.  So, to were others who were flying to D.C. for the Trump rally that devolved into the infamous riot. He was met with boos and chants of “Traitor” and “lowlife” on the plane (see below).  Is finding merit in one of the two impeachment charges, or expressing disapproval of Trump’s conduct, “treason”?  Is disagreement with Trump a measure of “lowlife”?

Apparently, Romney is more attuned to popular sentiment than the Trumpers on the plane.  Polls consistently show Trump’s disapprovals to hover around the mid-fifties.  It’s just that at this juncture, Biden has attained a level of repulsiveness equal to or slightly exceeding Trump’s.  So, in a contest limited to Biden v. Trump, Trump edges out Biden – and the celebrity pundits on Fox News are in a party mood.

They miss the point.  In a contest against a clearly, mentally and physically wobbly opponent, Trump can only eke out a narrow lead within the margin of error.  Don’t mistake these results for a suddenly growing and popular embrace of Trump.  That would be a big error in judgment.

The most recent NBC News poll (see below), like all the others going back a year or so, show a consistent distaste for Trump and an overriding dislike of Biden to match.  In this binary matchup, Trump is ahead by 2 points for the first time in this poll.  But lying in the poll’s weeds are some other interesting findings.  Any generic Republican facing Biden is 11 points ahead, and any generic Democrat forges 8 points ahead of Trump.  A no-name Republican does 9 points better than Trump against Biden; a no-name Democrat enjoys a landslide vis-à-vis Trump.

For the Democrats, the task is simple: remove Biden from the ticket.  They may do it.  Democrats are nimbler on their feet. Republicans seem to be hellbent on running their Trump Titanic into the iceberg.  On the other hand, he could win if Biden is on the ballot, but don’t expect any coattails if the Trump personality is evident down ballot.  Trumpism is a personality cult, and a not very endearing one.

RogerG

Read more here:

* “Kornacki: First Time In 16 NBC News Polls Over Four Years Where Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden”, Tim Haines, Real Clear Politics, November 20, 2023, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/11/20/kornacki_first_time_in_16_nbc_news_polls_over_four_years_where_donald_trump_leads_joe_biden.html

* Steve Kornacke on X about the NBC News poll at https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1726247457414414630

** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/

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USC 20, UCLA 38; Five Losses Over the Last Six Games

May be an image of 4 people, people playing football and text

Once again, USC proved that it doesn’t have much of a functioning defense.  And that incapacity has disheartened the offense.  Caleb Williams and company had a bad day from the offensive line with the sacks to the receivers with the dropped passes to the running backs with a total of 3 yards rushing.  Losing is a downer and the team is beaten.  It shows.

The team has quality players, by all accounts, but maybe not enough of them.  Yes, poor alignments, delinquent adjustments and strategy, poor coaching play a huge role.  But I’m wondering if at least some of the problems can be traced to California’s changing population.  California is becoming more feudal each decade.  The state may not be producing as many of the 5-star recruits in all positions, particularly the ones that require the big, burly types: d-line, o-line, linebackers.  I’m not an expert.  I’m just wondering.

All I have to go on is personal anecdote.  I taught and coached in a California Central Valley high school and went to high school in another one of those Central Valley secondary schools.  By the time I am working through my career as a teacher and coach, I began to notice the gradual decline of the towering, big, and burly teens in the student body.  It reflected the shrinking portion from African Americans and the descendants of European immigrant families, far different from my personal high school experience and my early years in teaching and coaching.

It’s not simply a matter of race.  The relationship between the social environment and biology is only beginning to be understood.  We do know that over time, maybe generations, new groups take on the characteristics of the surrounding and prevalent groups.  Point: things change and blend.

But, for the purposes of recruitment today, the pool has changed.  There are indications that some in the coaching ranks allude to the fact.

I’ve monitored online forums, social media threads, and web reports on the state of play in college athletics, especially USC. Head coach Lincoln Riley naturally has been the brunt of criticism for the team’s performance.  One of the recurring complaints is the relatively mediocre recruiting classes, especially if you want to compete for national championships.  Related to that is the charge that he hasn’t recruited enough local talent (LA area, California broadly), like from powerhouses like St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Ca.) and Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Ca.).  It is true but that the talent pool is plucked clean by programs from all over the country; though, this fact doesn’t detract from the possibility that the amount of highly rated athletes is incrementally shrinking leaving an intensifying feeding frenzy for what’s left each succeeding year.

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USC coach Lincoln Riley
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UCLA coach Chip Kelley celebrating

So, when Riley responds to questions about mediocre recruiting classes, particularly locally, he’s quite right in saying that the local pool may not give you what you need.  And, like everyone else, USC is in need of big, burly, fast, and smart.  They surely can be found in California, but it’s unrealistic to expect USC to rake in the vast majority of them.  And the problem worsens over the long term as California’s persistent outflux and influx change its population and athletic talent pool.

I’m wondering if California is demographically doomed.  Somehow, USC and the other big California schools will have to increasingly try and convince athletes from a national pool to come to the land with the highest rate of poverty and homelessness, expensive everything, violent and property crimes galore, gangs, blight and filth from the urban core to exurbia to small towns to the fields and orchards.

The weather, beautiful coastline, and the Sierras may not be enough.

RogerG

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The Flag of Israel on My Montana Home, 11/18/23

No photo description available.

I am not one to turn my vehicles and home into political billboards.  And no country comes close to my love for my own.  Still, Israel is special.  The history and cultural affinity of the people and country should draw us close to this narrow strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

The events of October 7 bring into sharp focus the threat to this natural strategic and cultural ally in a very dangerous neighborhood.  The horrors of that day should remind us that the U.S. is also a very special country.  We are the last remaining superpower on the side of the angels.  As such, we can’t be blinkered and flippant like those small countries that dominate the UN General Assembly.  Stan Lee of Marvel put it best when he wrote into the mouth of Spider-Man, “With great power there must also come great responsibility.”  We have the duty to prevent the annihilation of the Jews and Israel because we have the power to do it.

To be charitable, the radical Left may actually believe that their chants of “End the apartheid state” and “from the river to the sea” aren’t calls for genocide.  But if they have their way, there will be a second holocaust of the Jewish people.  Israelis would be thrust cheek-by-jowl into political communion with people who hate them, if recent opinion polls are any indication (see below).  A poll released on November 14 by Arab World for Research and Development (AWRD) shows that 83% of West Bank residents supported the slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7.  Of Gaza Strip inhabitants, almost 64% did so.  No other choice came close.  Of course, in an exercise of gross euphemism in the question, the slaughter of civilians merely for their Jewish ancestry was hidden behind “military operation” and the killers referred to as “resistance”.

How can a people become so hostile to the very existence of Jews?  Simple, the people are raised on a steady diet of the vilest propaganda.  I invite you to pay a visit to the Middle East Media Research Institute who regularly looks into the subject (see below).  In a Times of Israel story from 2013, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) funded camps for Palestinian children that instilled into these kids the idea that “Jews are the wolf” (see below).  Or check out the YouTube video, “Inside the Gaza Summer Camps Training Children to be the Next Generation of Terrorists” at https://youtu.be/vCWMBvxWKL0?si=p1oa8CyaMoiW-qnF, to get a taste of it.

“River to the sea” is a suicide pact for Jews.  Should the U.S. be a party to this eventuality through indifference?  If you talk to some on the Right, yes.  They see America as an insular island on the globe.  They wish a return to the 18th and 19th centuries when oceans were barriers, and the U.S. was a developing country. No longer on both counts.  They wish to disguise their indifference behind the existence of domestic problems.  Problems, like the poor, shall be with you always.  But we have the power and with that power we have the responsibility to prevent a horrible replay of history.

Some on the Right – Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens come to mind – seem to suggest that we do nothing till their domestic pet peeves are addressed in their preferred manner.  The flag of Israel flying from my house is a reminder that a superpower must look outward and inward at the same time.  It’s the adult response in a chaotic world.

RogerG

Read more here:

* The full AWRD poll can be found at https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf

* The Middle East Media Research Institute can be found at https://www.memri.org/search-results?country_id_report%5B0%5D=0&country_id_clip%5B0%5D=0&country_id_jttm%5B0%5D=0&tv_station_id%5B0%5D=0&subject_id%5B0%5D=0&jttm_subject_id%5B0%5D=0&cjlab_category_id%5B0%5D=0&category_id%5B0%5D=0&cdate=0&custom_data_range_start=11/18/2023&custom_data_range_end=11/18/2023&order_type=0&order_style=0&keywords=palestinian%20public%20opinion&type=0&ia_number=&sd_number=&sa_number=&content_number=&author_id&content_type%5B0%5D=0&current_site=

* The YouTube video, “Inside the Gaza Summer Camps Training Children to be the Next Generation of Terrorists”, can be seen at https://youtu.be/vCWMBvxWKL0?si=UmoiHj1r2dgwCDV_

* “Palestinian kids taught to hate Israel in UN-funded camps, clip shows”, Lazar Berman, The Times of Israel, August 14, 2013, at https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-kids-taught-to-hate-israel-in-un-funded-camps-clip-shows/

** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/

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Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” and the Coming Contest of the Abominable

While listening to a podcast of the musical career of Simon and Garfunkel, up popped a segment of their song “Mrs. Robinson”.  The verse struck me as oddly reminiscent of today.  Think of the looming contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  The verse:

“Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose”

I don’t expect much practical wisdom from rock stars, but this verse hits a chord.  A verse from 1968 comes full circle to meet 2024.

A week ago, I happened to be watching an episode of Fox News’s “The Five”.  A new Fox News poll had just been released showing Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden. Four of the five hosts were almost dancing a jig on the table about the results, as if votes had already been counted and Trump was preparing his coronation speech.  Is Trump becoming popular, or, more likely, is this a choice between the most abhorrent candidates of all time?

Look at the candidates’ negatives.  They are far and away more detested than loved. A smattering of polls from the Nov. 8-14 shows these guys to be stinkers (see below).  Biden’s detestability hovers between 53% and 59%. Trump’s swings from 54% to 56%.  Biden has achieved a level of loathsomeness slightly greater than Trump’s.  And the hosts of The Five are dancing a jig over this?

The contest is a consequence of the parties foisting on the general voting public execrable nominees.  The Democrats can’t come around to jettisoning their enfeebled sellout to the party’s neo-Marxist Left.  The Republicans can’t shake their enchantment with a narcissistic lunatic.  Now, the public has experienced both behind the Resolute desk and the bully pulpit.  If the contest is reduced to this binary, then the choice is about the least reviled.

So, why does Trump appear to be allegedly riding high?  Biden is in the seat of power, more immediate, before cameras, at the head of the nightly newscast, the subject of much conversation, and people get a daily dose of the failures of the party’s neo-Marxism: an overrun border, inflation, climate-change central planning, the unraveling of civilization, the group-guilt shaming, the international scene coming unglued, etc.  The present soon overwhelms the past.  Trump slides into background noise amid court appearances.  As a consequence, if the election were held today, the possibility of a president taking the oath while wearing an ankle bracelet looms large.

What’s there to like?

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It is said by many that people prefer Trump’s policies but personally dislike Trump.  There’s a lot to that, but those cherished policies are a reflection of longstanding GOP platforms.  Prior to 2015 and Trump’s grandstanding on Obama’s birth certificate, Trump had few if any policy ideas other than the border and trade protectionism.  His ignorance was profound.  In a 2016 debate, he couldn’t name the legs of the strategic triad. He was befuddled by the term “triad”.  When he amazingly got elected as a Republican, he not surprisingly turned to Republicans to fill out his administration.  From a guy who was a policy empty suit, many of his “wins” were crafted by the input of others who would later be insulted into oblivion.  Bill Barr, John Bolton, Mike Pence, Kelly, McMaster, et al, and the congressional leadership who were the fount of these ideas such as Paul Ryan, won’t be around for a Trump second bite at the apple.

In a Trump term #2, who will he turn to, the clown caucus of Matt Gaetz and company?  A person still possessing their wits would be a fool to get too close to Trump.  Expect any future Trump presidency to be filled with “fighters”, fighters who are a bit too punch drunk: the clown car caucus moves from Congress to the executive branch; the extended universe of isolationists and sycophants; and the rule of the Democrats’ craziness would be replaced by those who romanticize 1932’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the American Firsters of 1940.  Mmmm.  What would that world look like?

I have to amend my prediction that Trump is a loser.  Er, he is; you just might have to look down ballot for the misery.  The guy has no coattails because he’s kryptonite at the state and local level.  As long as Trump is far from you, he might be tolerable, even if you’ll only see him on parole or probation.  Yet don’t count out that Democrat vote-harvesting machine so quickly, or the possibility that they’ll do a switcheroo replacing the enfeebled with a fresh-faced, milquetoast neo-Marxist from the party’s ranks.

RogerG

Read more here:

* For the latest polls turn to https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/

** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/publish/home

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Today’s Fringe: The Left’s Squad and the Clown-Car Right

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I’ll soon be flying Israeli and Ukrainian flags on my house.  The two causes are similar and linked.  Both are facing extermination in a replay of the 1942 Wansee Conference (the Nazi Final Solution) and Stalin’s Holodomor (Stalin’s Final Solution on Ukraine in the 1930s).  Realistically, like it or not, America is the last remaining superpower on the side of the angels and, as such, we must look outward as well as inward.  Both fringes want a self-flagellating retreat.  It’s despicable.

The neo-Marxist Left, as symbolized by The Squad, see America and western civilization as the fount of oppression.  For them, we need to go away, or get boiled in revolution.

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The Squad

The clown-car Right wants us to go away, mostly from the international stage, their nuanced blabberings notwithstanding.  The simpletons think that we can’t chew gum and walk at the same time because our ability to produce gum has weakened.  They say “No” to Ukraine because of some strange affection for Putin’s propaganda and the existence of problems at home, which was always and will be forever true.  Speaking of an impossible standard.

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The Clown Caucus, clockwise: Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene

And “No” to Israel according to a charter member of the clown caucus, Marjorie Taylor Greene, unless we make cuts from somewhere else in the budget.  She’s got a laundry list which unsurprisingly doesn’t include cuts in ag subsidies for her rural northwest Georgia district or the entitlements.

She practices a cheap shot at foreign aid. It’s the go-to for dimwits.  It’s less than 1% of the federal budget.  Look it up.  And from that fraction of 1% we are supposed to address the atrophying of our defense supply chain and balance the budget?  So, in a flight of fancy, she’s mum on the almost $3 trillion of Social Security and Medicare but gun-ho about $39 billion (foreign aid), or .13% of the entitlement behemoths which are half of the total federal budget.  Do you see why the clown caucus qualifies for dimwit status?

The lunatics on the fringe seem to have outsized influence in both parties.  Of course, we’ve got the neo-isolationist Right of the clown caucus with a founding membership of Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, MJT, Matt Rosendale, and a few hangers-on, with Senators Josh Hawley and JD Vance occasionally dipping their toes in the fever swamp.  And on the other wing, we have the always crazy neo-Marxist Left that has intoxicated the Democratic Party.

I close with Michael Ramirez’s most recent cartoon that faced censure at the Washington Post for its accurate depiction of Hamas leader Hamadi hiding behind children and other innocent civilians.  It apparently hurt the feelings of some of the paper’s left-wing readership.  Are we that far gone that we can’t be safe in condemning the murder, rape, and beheading of real innocents?

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RogerG

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The Trump Personality in Politics

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Part of the House Republican clown caucus (l-r): Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greene

As a public-school teacher for 30 years, I know the critical rule of classroom management.  If one kid’s bad behavior is left unattended, it won’t take long for the classroom to become a zoo.  A parallel is Trump’s entry into the Republican presidential sweepstakes in 2015.  More than Trump entered the race, also came his personality.  It has left an impression on certain adolescent-minded clusters of grownups in the Republican Party – both registered voters and some in elected office.  Think of the clown caucus who engineered the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.

“Trumpian” boils down to braggadocio, bombast, simplistic and blunt issues in a blunt style with a lot of bullying of friends and foes alike.  It’s the over-the-top behavior of a person who craves the tabloid limelight.  The Obama birth certificate dustup is a classic example of a simplistic and blunt issue to be exploited for personal gain, which would be Trump’s signature approach to modern politics.  The only thing is, the bombast that drew so much attention ended in Trump scaping egg off his face when Obama produced the document.

Few, however, would predict that a windbag’s curtly rudeness would have an appeal among the rank and file.  And the whole style seemed to be electorally validated when Trump won in a 2016 black swan event.  Success can bring out the worst in people, and “Trumpian” came to be as fashionable as the John Wayne swagger in the 1950s.

While the personality type is appealing to certain party voters, it’s a big turnoff to getable swaths of the general electorate.  After 2016, Trump’s appeal down ballot was a disaster.  Let’s not forget 2022, at a time when the Democrats have made a shambles of the country, the Republicans could only squeak out a bare majority in the House leaving the clown caucus in a position to put their Trumpian hijinks on public display.  The Republicans are proving that neo-Marxism is survivable if Trump, his political personality, and the clown caucus are the face of party.

In Orwell’s “1984”, Big Brother had a face. In today’s rendition of the Republican Party, its face is that of Donald Trump with the likes of Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Majorie Taylor Greene, Matt Rosendale, and Nancy Mace in a chorus line behind.  Big Brother wouldn’t be laughed at; the picture of Trump and the Trumpkins elicits guffaws at first, followed by beads of sweat from the realization that they have actual power.  To be sure, these are not the kind of people that I would trust with my kids.

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Big brother from 1984

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The despicability of the Democratic Party and a sizeable faction in the Republican Party is registered in polls, something that you’ll recognize if you rely on more than Laura Ingraham for your news.  She doesn’t hesitate to bellow a poll with Trump ahead of Biden.  Yet, the reality in the most recent Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll presents a more complicated picture (see below).  Yes, among Republican primary voters, Trump is far and away the favorite with 58%.  Metrics of enthusiasm for Trump are high among these voters.  But – here’s the key number – among the general electorate, Biden squeaks out a tiny lead, essentially a tie.

Trump is favored on a host of issues – the border, economy, foreign affairs – but when offered a choice between Biden and Trump, it’s essentially a dead heat.  What’s holding Trump and the Republicans back from a sweeping lead?  Look at Trump’s negatives.  He’s even more reviled than Biden in a recent NBC News poll (see below).  Biden’s negative rating stands at 49%; Trump registers a 54% downside.  Megaphones like Laura Ingraham of Fox News would mention a Trump lead in a poll’s head-to-head matchup, but nary a word about Trump’s unlikability.  Does “putting lipstick on a pig” remind you of anything?

The Trump personality is only appealing to a sizeable portion of the Republican Party base.  It’s reviled nearly everywhere else.  Trumpian bluster might carry a candidate through the primary, but in places other than a crimson district, it’s the kiss of death.  If you want to stop the Democrats’ neo-Marxism, first win elections.  What’s a turn-on for primary voters can be poison in the general election.

Democrats know this.  That’s why they’re interfering in Republican primaries to elect Trumpians.  In my home state of Montana, mysterious ads are appearing that throw mud on Tim Sheehy, who’s challenged in the primary by the Trumpian Matt Rosendale.  Not a word in these hit pieces about Rosendale.

The group – Last Best Place PAC – is an undercover Democrat operation (see below) to help get Rosendale the nomination and, thus, an easier challenger for incumbent Democrat John Tester.  It’s the same Democrat tried-and-true tactic from 2022.  It’s not out of distaste for Sheehy that drives Schumer and company to stick it to Sheehy.  He knows, like everyone else who are not fans of the Trump schtick, that a Trumpian is a weaker candidate.  What worked in Arizona, Pennsylvania, et al, in 2022 has a good chance of succeeding in 2024.  Watch Republicans rush headlong into the trap.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Further, watch an example of a boisterous Trumpian on full display, Lauren Boebert from September of this year.  After this, is she like Trump – “I could stand in the middle of 5th Ave. and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” – and therefore immune from the voters’ wrath?  Are some Republican voters that morally stunted?  Is the Trumpian personality that hypnotizing?

The Trumpian personality came through the door in 2016 and has entrenched itself.  At this point, the party will have to face a disaster before the malignancy can be removed.  Like a classroom under the control of hellions, we have a party that has allowed this element to run roughshod.  And we will pay the piper.

RogerG

Read more here:

* For deep dive into the Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll, see the full text of the poll at https://www.suffolk.edu/-/media/suffolk/documents/academics/research-at-suffolk/suprc/polls/national/2023/10_24_2023_marginals_embargoed_2.pdf?la=en&hash=ABF93DCEAAFCA91DBE9BD17A2A10E4E4A2C6189E

* The NBC News poll can be read at https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read/poll-overwhelming-majorities-express-concerns-biden-trump-ahead-2024-r-rcna111347

* “Nine months before the Montana GOP primary, a mysterious super PAC is on the airwaves attacking Tim Sheehy”, Ally Mutnick, Politico, September 12, 2023, at https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/09/12/congress/montana-senate-sheehy-pac-ads-00115276

* More on the Democrat-affiliated PAC: “Dems Look To Meddle in Montana’s GOP Senate Primary”, Meghan Blonder, The Washington Free Beacon, September 13, 2023, at https://freebeacon.com/elections/dems-look-to-meddle-in-montanas-gop-senate-primary/